


oubliette

by tiend



Category: Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Amnesia, Angst, Gen, Imperial Era, Medical Experimentation, Post-Order 66, Trauma, mind wiping
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-10
Updated: 2018-08-10
Packaged: 2019-06-19 07:27:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,924
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15505371
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tiend/pseuds/tiend
Summary: CC-2224 is too useful to the Empire to be allowed to go obsolete. They want to rebuild him into something else, something less prone to human frailties. He's so tired he's nearly looking forward to it.





	oubliette

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Thymesis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thymesis/gifts).



The birthborns had been gossiping about the program for weeks by the time CC-2224 received his orders. It had taken longer for the Empire to get to him than he had anticipated; the efficient image it liked to project was more propaganda than reality. He had been decanted one of millions, engineered to be identical and interchangeable. Now CC-2224’s experience made him so uniquely valuable that the Empire was trying keep him alive long after he should have died with - with - on Utapau.

He had heard about its revival months ago - the remaining _vode_ were as reliable sources of information as they had ever been - but the response of the birthborns to the news puzzled him. They seemed to find it both shocking and titillating, eyes flicking over him in speculation or pity. To CC-2224, it was no more than a natural progression of what both Republic and Empire had already done to him. In some ways, it was what he had already started becoming: both of his knees had been replaced nearly a decade ago, and he'd had to get aural implants after a lifetime of standing too close to engines and artillery. 

When he had been on his feet for too long his femur ached where Dooku had snapped it. There was a pain in his back that never went away, the result of wearing armour for years longer than the Kaminoans’ most optimistic projections of his service life. CC-2224 found those kilos comforting rather than heavy. At night, when he removed the glossy white shell that contained him, he sometimes expected to float to the ceiling. Only the weight of his armour, of responsibility, of duty kept him on the ground. If the Empire wanted to rebuild him and make him into a living suit of armour, it was no more than he had already done to himself.

CC-2224 reported to the _Arc Hammer_ as ordered. 

The Phase Zero trooper project had failed in predictable ways. The nascent Empire had needed clone veterans to form a loyal backbone to its army. At the same time, many of those veterans’ bodies were breaking down from the constant strain of their life as soldiers. Its' typically heavy-handed response had been to forcibly remove the veterans’ limbs and organs, and replace them with cybernetic 'enhancements'. An ambitious project, and one that came too soon after the Betrayal. Too many of them had fractured from the dysphoria of their altered bodies. CC-2224 had been too important to the smooth transition of power to have been a candidate then. The Empire’s grip was much firmer now. 

He waited in a small antechamber for the revived program’s own Force user to evaluate his psychological fitness; would he be able to adapt to his new body, or would he suffocate and die, drowning in inherent wrongness? His intake to the _Arc Hammer_ had been processed almost as soon as he arrived. The surgical droids had access to the Imperial records - they probably had copies of his medical history since he was decanted. CC-2224 knew he was functioning within his nominal parameters. Some of the other candidates that waited with him eyed his scar curiously. None spoke. He had been famous, once. He had been - he had been - it was a thought without operational significance, and he quashed it with the ease of long practice.

The droid called his serial number, and he walked into the next room. It was intimidatingly plain. The sole feature was an interrogation chair in the center of the room. Some security droids, the director of the project - CC-2224 was surprised to find him taking such an active interest - and the Force user herself were also there, enough other bodies to make it feel a little crowded.

She was not an Inquisitor, which CC-2224 found curious. She was a middle aged Mirialan woman, precariously thin under her layers of black robes, with grey stubble clipped close to her head, and dry green-yellow skin. Her cheeks and the backs of her hands were badly scarred. CC-2224 had seen that before, where the tattoos had been cut away and forced to heal without bacta.

General Rom Mohc greeted him and said some meaningless and polite things about how important his expertise was to the Empire. CC-2224 saluted him, and handed his helmet to the waiting security droid. He settled himself in the chair. It was all so familiar. He had lost count of the number of times he’d had to do this; from his childhood evaluations as a GAR cadet, to the Empire’s mandatory checks for disloyalty. The other droids tightened the straps around him, so he would not be able to hurt himself with his convulsions. Last came the bite-guard, and the cold of the veritas serum spreading in the meat of his arm.

“Ashes, if you would be so kind,” said General Mohc, and stepped back, his eyes slightly too bright and focused. CC-2224 had known what his kind were like before he’d left Kamino. 

The Mirialan woman stood poised behind CC-2224, and spread the fingers of each hand carefully over each hemisphere of his skull. He felt the taste of something - he’d never been able to quantify what - on the back of his tongue that meant someone was dipping inside his head. Which side of the Force that someone used didn’t seem to make a difference. The taste grew stronger, mustier, and CC-2224 missed - he’d had shielding, once, before it was worn down and away. Someone had taught him, once. It was no more than a flicker of memory, but Ashes clutched after it with an urgency that made him gag. A brown robe, and the smell of lightning in the desert.

“Cody,” said Ashes, half-whispering, and CC-2224 flinched away from his - from the word badly enough that the straps were barely enough to hold him still. That word was a name, but it had belonged to someone else, a long time ago, and far away. She used it like a tuning fork, tapping the name on all the smooth scars in his mind that he had hoped were healed over, trying to find one that resonated. He felt the reverb shudder through him when she found it, trembling in his restraints. As she gouged the pathway open inside his head, CC-2224 thought he might be screaming, but he couldn't hear it over the white roar of pain. She dragged him down the fissure with her, down and down and down, to a small buried place where things that were forgotten should have stayed forgotten. Things that had been unfolded and refolded so many times the edge of memory was worn smooth.

Adding a hook to his belt for a, for his, for the weapon because his - he - the man always lost it, someone in browns and creams nudging a cup of tea to him towards over the table as he calculated and recalculated numbers in the endless desperate task of keeping his brothers safe; a copper-gold beard, and the shiver of desire that rolled through him at the soft scratch of it against his neck. His teeth in the wiry muscle of a freckled shoulder, and his own yearning reflected back to him, cradling him in reciprocated want. The awareness that he was alone, and yet that someone was standing at his shoulder, so he wasn’t, and he needn’t be, ever again. Blue eyes with flecks of gold and a wry understanding. Waking from a nightmare and the warmth of a body next to him, tucking himself around it as he drifted off back to sleep. Ashes put her plague hooks into all of these things, and pulled. He could feel the tautness somewhere visceral, somewhere deeper than his marrow. CC-2224 knew he was screaming now as those hooks ripped upwards, and his mind started to tear. He had become familiar with his limits over the years, and he knew he was past them now. He didn’t pass out. Perhaps Ashes needed him conscious for this amputation. Perhaps General Mohc liked to watch.

Ashes removed her hands after the last of his memories of - of whatever it was that had been were wrenched free. CC-2224 was dripping sweat, and his body ached. Psychosomatic pain, he knew, but he still needed to do breathing exercises to calm himself down.

“He’s a perfect candidate,” said Ashes. Her breathing was also irregular. “No surprises. I had to look deep, but there was no sign of ...” She trailed off, but it seemed that General Mohc knew who she meant, and was relieved, rocking back on his heels.

“Thank you, Ashes,” said the director. “Your work is, as ever, exemplary. Would you like to sit down before the next candidate?” 

The security droids unstrapped CC-2224, and helped him walk to the recovery room. His blacks needed cleaning; the smell of his fear sweat was already rising from them. He sat until he was sure he could walk with his usual sure stride, and put his helmet back on. It was possible that Ashes was the first person to touch his skin for years. 

Progress was swift now that he’d been approved. First his left arm, and when he was capable of fine motor skills with his upgraded fingers, they took his right. All of them were ambidextrous; after he had mastered that one too, they took his legs and his - his pelvis. He supposed it wasn’t as if he was using it for anything. The cybernetic systems were supposed to be more efficient, and it’d be nice not to piss his blacks during long engagements. His organs didn’t quite fit properly in the new - the chassis for his new self - and he had to remind himself that this discomfort, at least, was temporary. They’d be replaced soon. His back didn’t hurt any more than it usually did. The Empire was more generous with medications than the Republic had ever been.

After that his normally eidetic memory became a little blurred. An infection at one of his new interface points gave him a fever, and he slipped in and out of fuzzy consciousness in the _Arc Hammer’s_ infirmary. He dreamed often of standing alone in a desert, nothing more than a shadow on a flat land, under a vast open sky. Around him, the featureless land stretched away. He knew somehow that there was nothing in any direction, that it was empty to every distant horizon, but he picked one anyway, and started walking towards something. He’d never get there, but he knew he had to try. There was an absence, something he was desperate to find. Something that should have stayed forgotten. If he hadn’t remembered it, it would never have been lost.

Ashes came to visit him. The reactions of the med droids alone told him that it was not normal behavior for her, and the doctor’s look of hastily stifled fear was, if anything, funny. She stroked his forehead, ran her fingers through his greying curls, and soothing relief spread from her touch. Like cold water on a hot day, or taking your boots off before racking out, or leaning on - or drinking tea with - or. But there was nothing there to remember. CC-2224 found tears had startled from his eyes. It didn’t matter. When they took his eyes he wouldn’t be able to cry anymore.

“I’m sorry,” she told him, gently. “But it was the only kindness I could give you. Everything will be so much easier now you have nothing left to lose.”


End file.
